Inquiry Into Time and Perception, Study #1 (2016)
These short video portraits for wall-sized projection installations act as “windows” opening onto the passions and the ambiguities of the physical and emotional manifestation, drawing the viewer to subtleties that might otherwise be unnoticed.
The intimacy that the camera provides is beautifully connected to the dynamic aliveness that is evoked in the cycles of Body-Mind Centering® (BMC) Teacher/Practitioner and dance artist Mariko Tanabe’s related work, more specifically the power and complexity in the manifestation of emotions. The videos seek to depict the subjects, charting transcendence and transformation, and the space they inhabit.
These studies draw on a deep vitality, and its intrinsic qualities will address the senses, intellect, and imagination.
I chose to investigate how vantage point perspective and framing reconstitute an image, and how, for example, the conventions of the Old Master painters arouse and create, even intensify, emotional extremes in their panels and canvasses. The immersive nature of this art and imagery seems to suggest that an image of our external appearance could convey something of our personality and of our inner life, reference points to the potentiality of both the video work and the BMC explorations of consciousness.
Ideas of painterly light, as well as considerations of mirrors and reflectors, lenses and natural light, and probing intimacy and distance simultaneously were considered in my approach. Consultations on these ideas allowed me to reflect further on the emotive power of imagery, how perceptual ambiguities are aroused, but also the formal possibilities of technology and projections.
A goal of this project is to explore challenges related to issues of visual perception and spectatorship, questioning the relationship between the screen as a plane of action, and to elucidate the viewer’s placement in relation to a projected image, acknowledging their motion and the moving picture on the screen as part of the compositional whole. Equally, to chart how amplified perspectives of the moving body and the shared impulse, intention, feeling, and empathetic response to kinetic images resonate in the viewers’ mind and body, and in what manner their senses are captivated.
These HD videos were shot at 120 frames/sec allowing for the smooth slow movement.
Directed: Philip Szporer
Choreographer: Mariko Tanabe
Director of Photography: Bill Kerrigan
Editor: Marlene Millar